They Stand Between The Darkness And The Light
by Prophecy
Summary: Demons, Vampires, Prophecies, Hellmouth, Yada yada yada.....!


Buffy The Vampire Slayer  
  
THEY STAND BETWEEN THE DARKNESS AND THE LIGHT  
  
AUTHOR: Prophecy  
EMAIL: kyradax@startrekmail.com  
DISTRIBUTION: Just ask.  
RATING: PG-13 At the moment, i may change it later.  
SPOILERS: None that i can think of but then thinking is not my strong suit!.  
SUMMARY: Demons, Vampires, Prophecies, Hellmouth, Yada yada yada.....!   
DEDICATION: To everyone that will read it!  
FEEDBACK: VERY VERY welcome, as this is my first Fan-fic   
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters of BtVS, they belong to Joss(god)Whedon, i just take them out of the box and play with them a bit, but i'll put them back after.. honest...!  
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Being my first fic i hope you can bare with me as the plot my take some time to fully develop, I have chosen to do quite a long fic for my first, and as i have it figured should be about 10-15 chapters of similar size.  
In the world for this story the setting would be some time after the Master's death, please excuse me if my continuity is slightly off, and i hope that you enjoy the story.  
  
  
CHAPTER ONE  
  
Sunnydale, the town of many graveyards. Right now in one of those graveyards Xander stood alone, and at 11:30 at night that was not a wise thing. Sure in most towns being in a graveyard at any time was no biggie, it's full of dead people, and dead people generally don't do much. They certainly don't usually attack you and suck out your blood. BUT this is Sunnydale.  
"Umph.." grunted Xander as he staggered back.  
Reeling, from the impact of the rapidly moving vampire fist, that he had been too slow to avoid, he slammed into a tree and slumped to the floor. He fumbled around in his pocket for the vial of holy water that should have been there. 'No such luck' he thought.  
Glacing around for a glimmer of hope, the now weaponless Xander rolled away from the tree. He began to get up, when the rather vicious looking vampire that had tried to take his head off landed a powerful kick right between his shoulder blades, sending him flying over a nearby grave.   
Xander gathered himself together and got up. To his suprise he had already risen and turned around before the vampire had managed to reach him.   
"Look, Dead-boy, were you planning on draining me anytime soon, because frankly this is boring."  
The vampire, quite taken aback by the outburst, halted his advance momentarily. Xander too stopped doing pretty much everything as he was unsettled by what he had just said, it just came out, he didn't even think about it. Now he had thought about it he realised what a cretin he had been. 'Xander what in the hell are you doing' he thought.  
"Why are you in such a hurry to die, mortal." the vampire said, looking at him quizically.  
"I dunno, looking at your face is enough to make anyone want to meet the end of days I suppose!" Xander quipped again.  
'Stop it before you annoy him any more.' he then mentally slapped himself.  
Fortunately for him the vampire seemed to have a sense of humor because he was roaring with laughter. Then suddently Xander had a brainwave, he was going to die, or he was going to run..... A few moments thought later he pointed at the vampire.  
"Or maybe it's because i know the slayer is RIGHT BEHIND YOU" he said in a very matter of fact tone as he gave the vampire the smile he'd seen Buffy use many times.  
The vampire immediately whirled around, that was all the time Xander needed, he was off. He ran through the graveyard at breakneck speed, never looking back, he jumped a bushy fence and hit the ground running.  
'How in the hell am i running this fast, i didn't think humans could outrun vampires?' he questioned himself as he ran.  
Finally Xander made it to the graveyard wall, and was just about to climb over it when he heard the vampire closing the distance between them as he slowed to ascend the wall.  
"Didn't you mother tell you not to leave the table before the meal is over" the vampire spat as he ripped Xander off the top of the wall sending him flying back into the cemetery. He tumbled across the ground rolled up in a ball and came to a stop now almost 15 metres from the wall.  
Xander groaned as he began to get back up off the floor, the vampire was stood over him, glaring.  
'This is it,' he thought.   
'I knew this would happen someday, i mean i hang with a slayer i guess i'm not popular in the vampire community.'  
"Well you've been interesting prey to say the least, BUT..." the vampire chuckled and bared his teeth and his face shifted into it's true demonic form.  
'This may be it, but I'm not goin down like this.'   
Unfortunately, by the time he had decided to fight (even though he knew it was hopeless), the vampire already had him firmly held by both shoulders, and was standing behind him about lower his fangs to pierce Xanders neck. Then he remembered what he saw Buffy do in this situation when Luke the Master's Lapdog had grabbed her at the bronze. He stopped resisting the vampires grip and waited for a moment, then slammed his head back as hard as he could catching the vampire completely off-guard. The vampire staggered back a couple of steps holding his face, and Xander turned and punched the vampire right in the face just as he began to stop nursing his bleeding shattered nose.  
Much to the vampire's surprise and Xander's, the punch sent the vampire flying backward into a gravestone where it landed in crumped heap.  
'What the... A vampire that's a wuss, hmm... suppose there has to be at least one!?!?'  
In the next few moments several thoughts shot through Xander's mind, there were the voices of Willow, Buffy and Giles saying 'RUN', there was a powerful urge to pumell the crumpled vampire and dust him, and then there was a stray thought about Ho Ho's!  
Due to the distraction of chocolatey goodness the vampire had time to rise to his feet again. Rather disorientated by ringing in it's head and the blood lust that began to cloud it's vision the vampire stedied itself against the grave behind it and sprang toward Xander, snarling with rage.  
If it hadn't been for the growl Xander would have never known the vampire was approaching. Casting aside his visions of Chocolate Hurricanes he snapped his head toward the noise, the vampire came into focus, and before Xander had time to think about moving some instinct took over and he flipped the charging vampire over his hip. The vampire was promptly sent flying upside down over Xander and slammed back-first into a tree. Hanging staked above the ground for a moment, the howling vampire then exploded into a cloud of ash that lightly covered Xander and the floor.  
Dusting himself off, and picking the remains of his fangy friend out of his hair, a somewhat dusty gray tinged Xander made his way toward the exit of the graveyard.   
He was almost halfway home walking in a daze when the revelation of what he had just done hit him.  
'I just wasted a vamp single handed.' was the first thing he thought.  
He mulled it over a bit and decided that it was nothing, he'd killed vampires before, sure he'd generally done it with the help of Buffy, and normally he had staked them when they weren't even looking.  
He walked a little further and was almost home when again his brain finally kicked into gear again.   
'Hold on, give yourself some credit, this WAS different, you didn't just dust that vamp, you taunted him and then completely kicked his arse.' he finally concluded.  
With that thought firmly rooted in his mind he decided not to head for home but to try and find someone to tell about his latest vampire butt kicking extravaganza.  
He looked at his watch, quarter to midnight. 'Hmmmm.' who would be up now he thought, then realised that it didn't matter if they WERE up they would be when he got there.  
First things first he thought better make sure with Giles that there isn't such a thing as a wussy vampire or he would look real silly getting worked up about it and waking up Willow and Buffy.  
He double-timed it to the nearest phone and called Giles' home humber, he waited and listened as the line rang several times and was then picked up.  
A very sleepy and now quite testy Giles was brought from his slumber by the ringing of his phone, it was at times like this that he wished he had a phone next to his bed. He got up threw a robe over himself and went toward the din that was his phone.  
"Hello......" Giles yawned into the phone, "w..who is..." he began again but was abruptly cut off.  
"GILES!!.....Giles..Giles, it Xander..." he ranted impatiently. "You are never going to believe what happened just now, but before i tell you i need to know something important.."  
"W...what?... Xander...what time is it?...What do you want to know?" replied the disorientated Giles.  
"It's almost midnight, but that's not important right now, Giles, you listening... OK... I need to know is there such a thing as a wimpy vampire?"  
Giles now sat up in bed rubbing his eyes, and let out a groan when he heard the word vampire, but slowly began to understand the question, if not the timing and reason for the impromptu wakeup call.  
"Xander, the mere fact that you seem to be interested in some manner of research is enough to make me believe i am still asleep...." Giles began  
Xander stood by the phone wishing he hadn't bothered as Giles stated to chew him out over the phone, finally he got a word in edgeways.  
"Giles!... If your done?... Please tell me there's no such thing as a weakling vampire." he enquired as if it was an everyday question.  
"Well i'm not really equiped to answer with any degree of accuracy, but as far as knowlegde serves me all vampire are significantly stronger than humans, even when they are newly sired. Xander, what... who... " he was about to try and find out what was actually going on but Xander had heard what he needed and had already hung up.  
Xander was already halfway down the street by the time Giles realised that he'd been hung up on, and he sat down on his couch, mumbled something about the time and promptly fell asleep.  
"Buffy!...... Buffy!..... Wake Up!....." Xander half shouted and half whispered as he tapped on Buffy's window.  
If it hadn't been for Buffy's enhanced senses, she would not have be woken by the noises from he window, as Xander wasn't able to make much noise as his movements were severely restricted in fear of losing his balance on the small porch roof.  
Faint noises and the sound of Xander's whispering voice began to mix themselves with that of Buffy's current dream, and a few moments later she began to regain consciousness. Buffy sat up in bed and looked at the window, there was a rather red faced Xander griping onto her window frame.   
Instantly concerned that Xander was in some form of imminent danger she jumped straight out of bed opened her window, unfortunately she hadn't noticed that Xander had transfered his grip to the window itself, so was left with nothing to hold. A moment or two later he was picking himself up from the front garden, and nursing a rather sore rear end. The slayer without thinking dived out of the window into an elegant flip and landed firmly next to Xander still wearing her yummi sushi pajamas.  
"Xander, are you ok?" she asked, helping him the rest of the way up.  
"Fine, being bounced off a tree by a vampire hurt more than this." he said as if she should know what he was talking about.  
"Xander what are you talking about?"  
"Oh yeah, i almost forgot. I was walking home and one of our dead friends of the bloodsucking variety descided that i would make a tasty little snack. I tried to talk him out of it of course, but you know vampires, they're so....... persistant!" he said with his greatest degree of sarcasm.  
"Xander, you're joking, right?" Buffy looked puzzled. "You look alive to me, what happened did Angel come sort him out?"  
"Deadboy?!!!!!! Nooooo...... After that vamp bounced me off that tree I kicked his arse and introduced him to Mr Treebranch. He said something like 'Aarrrrrrrggggggg' then kinda left in lots of directions at once!" he pulled some fragments of ash from his hair. "You know we really should ask Giles if there are any health risks we should be aware of to do with vampire dust, i don't wanna get cancer from vampire slayage!" cracked Xander as he smiled at Buffy.  
Buffy was almost totally speechless, Xander wasn't joking, he was being completely honest. She took a moment to compose herself, but still when she tried to speak nothing came out, she just stared blankly at him like he still had ash on his face and she would laugh if she talked.   
From nowhere a ringing filled Xanders' mind and his vision clouded over, he felt weightless and tired. Moments later his vision cleared, the weight returned to his body, and the ringing stopped.  
Buffy was staring at him, but with a different expression, one of impatience. Gone where the pajamas and instead they were replaced with a stappy black top and light coloured pants.   
"Wakey Wakey sleeping beauty!" Willow's voice trilled from behind him.  
"Huh....?" replied the not very awake Xander.  
"Come on Xander, class is over, and you need to stop drooling now, we have to go meet Giles in the libary." said Buffy. She patted him on the shoulder as she began to leave.  
  
END OF CHAPTER ONE   
  
  



End file.
